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President Juan Manuel Santos honored for peace deal to end decades-long civil war

Colombia's Congress passed the deal after voters repudiated it in a referendum

(CNN)Half his country may not support his efforts at peace, but Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos now has a Nobel Peace Prize for pursuing a deal to end the longest-running war in the Americas.

Santos accepted his award Saturday after brokering a deal to stop the fighting in the 50-year conflict with the leftist rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known by its Spanish acronym, FARC.

Photos:Nobel Peace Prize winners

Photos:Nobel Peace Prize winners

The late Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel left the bulk of his fortune to create the Nobel Prizes to honor work in five areas, including peace. In his 1895 will, he said one part was dedicated to that person "who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." See the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize since it was first awarded in 1901.

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The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the International Campaign to Abolition Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a coalition of non-governmental organizations in 100 countries dedicated to achieving a prohibition of nuclear weapons. Beatrice Fihn, the organization's chief executive, told reporters that the award of the prize to her organization was "hugely important" in the quest to abolish nuclear weapons.

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The 2016 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos for his efforts to end Colombia's long-running civil war.

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The 2015 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet for its "decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in the country in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011." From left to right: the Secretary General of the Tunisian General Labour Union Houcine Abbassi, the President of the National Order of Tunisian Lawyers Fadhel Mahfoudh, the Tunisian Human Rights League Abdessatar Ben Moussa and the President of the Tunisian employers union Wided Bouchamaoui.

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Malala Yousafzai split the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with India's Kailash Satyarthi for their struggles against the suppression of children and for young people's rights. Yousafzai came to global attention after she was shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 for her efforts to promote education for girls in Pakistan.

Former United Nations Secretary General Koffi Annan, center, with French Forces commander Gen. Alain Pellegrini, right, review UNIFIL soldiers upon Annan's arrival to the U.N. peacekeeping base in the southern Lebanese town of Naqura, on August 29, 2006. Annan and the United Nations won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.

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Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000.

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A flag bearing the logo of Medecins sans Frontieres (also known as Doctors Without Borders) stands in the middle of a makeshift clinic at Kenya's Dadaab refuge on October 16, 2011. Medicins sans Frontieres won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.

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David Trimble, left, and John Hume hold up their diplomas and medals after receiving their Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, on December 10, 1998. Trimble and Hume won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998.

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Jody Williams sits in front of donated shoes symbolizing landmine victims during Ban Landmines Week on March 8, 2001, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Williams and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997.

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Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, left, and Jose Ramos-Horta shake hands at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo on December 9,1996, prior to the awarding ceremony. Belo and Ramos-Horta won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996.

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Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995.

South African National Congress President Nelson Mandela, left, and South African President F.W. de Klerk shake hands in Oslo, Norway, on December 10, 1993, after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Rigoberta Menchu campaigns in the Alameda neighborhood of Guatemala City, Guatemala, on November 4, 2011. Menchu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992.

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Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.

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Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

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U.N. soldiers unload their gear from a C-130 cargo plane as the U.N. observer team policing the Iran-Iraq ceasefire arrives in Baghdad. The United Nations Peacekeeping Forces won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988.

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Costa Rican President-elect Oscar Arias waves to supporters after receiving the ceremonial sash at the National Stadium in San Jose on May 8, 2006. Arias won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987.

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Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel appears at a press conference at the United Nations on October 27, 2004 in New York. Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

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Members of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War clasp hands on October 11, 1985, at the group's Boston headquarters after the organization was awarded the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. The doctors are, from left, Eric Chivian, co-founder; John Pastore, secretary; Sidney Alexander, president of the U.S. affiliate group; and James Muller, co founder.

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Archbishop Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

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Former Polish President Lech Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.

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Alva Myrdal, right, and Alfonso Garcia Robles won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982, having played a central role in the United Nations' disarmament negotiations.

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Refugees are registered in Somalia in November 1981. The Nobel Peace Prize that year was awarded to the United Nations' refugee agency, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

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Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who has devoted his life to the struggle for human rights, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980.

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Mother Teresa, founder of the Missionaries of Charity order, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

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President Jimmy Carter, center, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin join hands after signing the Camp David Accords. Sadat and Begin won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.

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Amnesty International won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977.

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Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, co-founders of the Community for Peace People, share a joke while leading a peace rally of Catholic and Protestant woman in the Protestant Shankill Road, in Belfast, on August 28, 1976. Williams and Corrigan won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976.

Hanoi's delegate Le Duc Tho cheers to the crowd while leaving the International Conference Center in Paris on January 23, 1973, after meeting with presidential adviser Henry Kissinger, center. Le Duc Tho and Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973.

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German Chancellor Willy Brandt poses after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize n Oslo on December 10, 1971.

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Dr. Norman Borlaug holds up stalks of his specifically crossbred wheat, designed to be more disease-resistant. Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

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The International Labour Organization won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969. David Morse was the director general of the organization from 1948-70.

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Rene Cassin, the French jurist and a deputy chairman of the NATO committee for human rights, holds up a telegram after being notified of winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968.

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Children drink milk handed out by UNICEF workers in Moundou, Chad, on October 26, 1965. UNICEF won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965.

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The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. displays his Nobel Peace Prize medal in December 1964 in Oslo, Norway. Then 35, King was the youngest man to have received the prize. The U.S. civil rights leader was slain in 1968.

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A group of Red Cross rescue workers hold a capsule used to supply food and beverages to three trapped miners at an iron ore mine near Lengede, Germany, on October 28, 1963. The League of Red Cross Societies won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1963.

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American chemist Linus Pauling won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962 for his campaigning for a nuclear test ban treaty. Pauling also won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1954.

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Dag Hammarskjold, Swedish politician and the second U.N. secretary general, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961.

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King Olav V of Norway, left, shakes hands with Albert Lutuli, president-general of the African National Congress, after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960 in Oslo.

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British politician Philip Noel-Baker was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1959.

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Georges Pire, right, receives the Nobel Peace Prize in 1958 for his efforts to help European refugees leave their camps and return to a life of freedom and dignity.

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Canadian politician Lester Bowles Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for his active role in attempting to prevent war.

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North Korean refugees cross the Naktong River in South Korea on August 6, 1950, just a short time before the beginning of the conflict between North and South Korea. The U.N. forces in Korea had set a time limit of 15 hours for crossing the river. In 1954, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the UNHCR, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

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Gen. George Catlett Marshall of the U.S. Army won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.

Leon Jouhaux, a French union activist, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1951.

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Ralph Bunche won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for his "unremitting campaign to develop man's ability to live in peace, harmony and mutual understanding with his fellows," according to the Nobel Committee.

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Lord John Boyd Orr, a British nutritionist and health campaigner, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1949.

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A family begins to assimilate in a new community on August 4, 1941, after being rehabilitated by the American Quakers and the Unitarian service committee, after fleeing with thousands of others from war-torn Lorraine, France, to begin a new life. The Friends Service Council (The Quakers) and the American Friends Service Committee won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947.

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John Raleigh Mott, left, and Emily Greene Balch won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946. Mott won for his contributions to the creation of a peace-promoting religious brotherhood across national boundaries. Balch won for unrelenting efforts to fight for peace.

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U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945.

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American Red Cross workers check packages for troops fighting in Leyte, Philippines, on November 20,1944. The International Committee of the Red Cross won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1944.

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The Nansen International Office for Refugees won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1938.

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Viscount Cecil of Chelwood won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937 for promoting peace at a time of war.

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Carlos Saavedra Lamas won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1936 for his personal contribution to the cause of peace in Latin America.

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Carl Von Ossietzky, seen here in a concentration camp uniform, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935.

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Arthur Henderson, Britain's foreign secretary, arrives at 10 Downing Street in London on August 17, 1931. Henderson won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1934.

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Sir Norman Angell won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933 for promoting international peace.

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Swedish Bishop Nathan Söderblom won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1930. Söderblom was the first clergyman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Frank Billings Kellogg, an American diplomat, speaks after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in a ceremony at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway. The award commemorates his origination of the Kellogg Peace Pact, which was signed by European nations and the United States in Paris. Kellogg won the Peace Prize in 1929.

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French educator Ferdinand Buisson was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1927 with Ludwig Quidde, right, who founded the League for Human Rights.

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German politician and industrialist Gustav Stresemann, left, and French politician Aristide Briand received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.

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British statesman and Secretary of State for the Colonies Joseph Chamberlain, left, and American statesman and financier Charles Gates Dawes won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925.

The Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 was awarded to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt.

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Austrian author Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicita von Suttner became the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905.

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Members of the Red Cross Motor Corps, all wearing masks to protect against the further spread of the influenza epidemic, carry a patient on a stretcher into an ambulance in St. Louis in October 1918. The International Committee of the Red Cross won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1917.

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The Institute of International Law won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1904 for promoting peace around the world.

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English politician, pacifist and trade unionist Sir William Randal Cremer won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1903.

The first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901 was awarded jointly to Swiss activist Jean Henry Dunant, left, and French economist Frederic Passy.

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"After six years of serious and often intense, difficult negotiations ... this agreement marks the beginning of the dismantling of an army and its conversion into a legal political movement," he said at the ceremony in Oslo, Norway.

"Like life itself, peace is a process with many surprises," he said. "(But) I was determined to turn this setback into a chance to develop the widest possible consensus for reaching a new agreement."

After the plebiscite, the President returned to the negotiating table to incorporate many of the opposition's objections.

But again, the objectors balked, claiming the fundamentals of the peace accord still condone the atrocities committed by the FARC.

President skips voter consensus

In the more than five decades since it started, the armed group has seized territory, attacked government forces and interfered with political life through high-profile kidnappings. As decades passed, thousands of people were killed. Up to 220,000 died in the insurgency and as many as 5 million people were displaced -- more than one out of every 10 Colombians.

Santos, left, and FARC leader Timoleon Jimenez seal the revised deal.

Santos' political opposition -- led by two former presidents -- had proposed terms that would require some members of the guerrilla movement to accept prison sentences for their crimes. But in the end, it was a provision that would not make the final cut.

The President, not willing to suffer another political defeat, chose not to hold another referendum to ratify the reforms.

The rebels signed off on the revised peace deal and now have 150 days to put down their arms.

The end of war?

"Ladies and gentlemen, there is one less war in the world, and it is the war in Colombia," Santos told the audience Saturday in the Oslo City Hall.

"I have served as a leader in times of war, (and) from my own experience, it is much harder to make peace than to wage war," he said.

The President deviated from his prepared remarks to pay tribute to the families of those killed in the conflict, and to the victims themselves, including Ingrid Betancourt, who was held hostage by FARC for six years. To a round of applause, Santos asked them to stand and be recognized for their contribution to peace, and for their loss.

But there was a notable absence. FARC leaders who signed off on the deal were not in attendance as the ceremony's host country, Norway, still considers the group a terrorist organization.